Hidden Gods

by Anthony Masters

  ‘I don’t suppose they give a shit how many of their hostages got killed –’

  ‘Or made their escape.’

  The truck rumbled out on to a Tarmac road.

  ‘What about water?’ asked Hugo.

  Philippa scrambled with considerable agility into the rear and then gave a cry of triumph. ‘There’s a drum right here.’

  Hugo glanced back to the compound and his optimism rose even further as he still saw no sign of pursuit. The keys, the petrol, the open gates, the water – what the hell was going on? It almost looked as if someone had deliberately arranged an easy escape for them. But if so, who did they have to thank? And why?

  Gradually the sun rose, turning the sand into a dun-coloured ocean frozen in rolling waves. Apart from the odd derelict vehicle and a few pieces of unidentifiable scrap metal, nothing broke the contours and the road stretched on towards the horizon, undulating slightly but never veering from its straight course.

  They drove on without passing another vehicle or seeing a helicopter or an aircraft, the landscape remaining monotonously unchanging.

  ‘We’ve got about three-quarters of a tank of diesel now,’ he said suddenly, tapping at the wavering needle. ‘Let’s hope the gauge is accurate.’

  ‘It might get us there. I think it’s about a hundred miles to the Iraqi border.’

  ‘So we could end up walking. The age of miracles may not be with us, after all.’

  The road was now running over sand-hills and the horizon was repeatedly lost as they dipped up and down. Then above the rattling and roaring of the truck they heard the chatter of a helicopter.

  The truck shook as Hugo squeezed the last drop of speed out of its ill-tuned engine, but soon the aircraft was hovering directly overhead and the sound of its rotors was deafening.

  ‘Piss off,’ said Hugo, clenching his teeth, willing the pilot to lose interest. ‘Just piss off.’

  Forcing himself to lose speed, Hugo tried to look casual, putting an elbow out of the window and appearing as bored as any Iraqi driver crossing all too familiar landscape.

  ‘He’s tracking us.’

  Just stay calm.’ Hugo was sweating.

  ‘He’s coming in.’

  Hugo accelerated slightly and then regretted it. The pilot must not think he was panicking. The rotor blades were much louder than the truck’s engine now and his head reeled with the metallic tumult.

  ‘For God’s sake – ’ he began.

  ‘He’s going up.’

  Slowly the helicopter rose, gained height and flew ahead of them for what seemed like eternity.

  ‘What’s going on?’ gasped Hugo, trying to wipe the sweat out of his eyes.

  The aircraft wheeled and headed for the horizon.

  ‘I’ll have to stop,’ said Hugo a few minutes later. ‘I feel lousy.’ His heart was pounding and he felt feverish.

  ‘Keep going.’ Philippa was ruthless. ‘There’s some kind of building up on the horizon.’

  Grimly he drove on, seeing the shimmering outline of something insubstantial. He knew he had to get past as normally as possible, but without warning a red haze burnt across his eyes and Hugo only just had time to switch off the engine before he passed out. As his head buzzed with pain and fever, he thought he heard the sound of winged serpents. They were floating in his mind until he saw an open casket. One by one, the creatures went inside.

  Philippa was beside him, letting water flow into his mouth. ‘We’re in the guardhouse of some kind of bunker that’s built into a sandhill,’ she was saying. ‘There’s no one around but the place is all secured.’

  Hugo sat up, his head aching. She poured more water into a dirty plastic cup and he sipped at it gratefully. Never had he tasted anything so good. Philippa poured out more and he continued to drink, oblivious of anything else.

  ‘Maybe there’s some fuel here. It looks as if the place has been abandoned in a panic. Could mean the allies are getting nearer.’

  Hugo glanced around his surroundings. There were a couple of desks, a filing cabinet, dirty coffee cups in a sink, a photograph of Saddam Hussein in full military uniform, a calendar with a highly coloured picture of a mosque, and a fire extinguisher. What does it all mean, he wondered, as he heard again the unmistakable sound of the winged serpents. Were they still in his mind, or not?

  When Hugo felt stronger, they walked slowly and cautiously out of the guardhouse, ducked under a security barrier and began to examine the structure of the long, low building that was half buried in the sand-hill. It was just after one and the sun raged fiercely above them, a red blob of suffocating heat.

  There were no windows and a steel hatch at the front, but on the side wall there was a metal door that looked as if it had come into contact with the back of a vehicle. Hugo rattled at it but it remained obstinately shut. Then he swung at it with the heavy metal of the extinguisher, and there was a crunching sound as the door shuddered.

  ‘Something’s giving.’

  Suddenly they were gazing into a dim, cool interior.

  ‘Christ.’

  Beautifully painted in acrylic, standing majestically against a setting desert sun, was the pyramid.

  ‘We’re meant to be here,’ Philippa said when she had recovered from the shock. ‘That’s why it was all OK The truck – the helicopter flying away – ‘

  Hugo stared at the picture in silence, afraid for the first time since they had left the hangar. But this kind of fear was very different. It was deep inside him, familiar but not realized for a long time. It was atavistic.

  ‘Let’s go,’ said Philippa.

  Somehow he forced himself to follow her.

  *

  They walked slowly and apprehensively down a dim, cold corridor, gradually becoming conscious of a sharp, chemical smell. Philippa pushed open a set of rubber doors to reveal an empty room. The floor was covered in blue linoleum and across it was a trail of glutinous, metallic-smelling liquid which in the darkened space seemed to have a slightly luminous glow. The trail led to another set of rubber doors. They found themselves in a small, oblong room whose walls were covered with computer screens and terminals. Facing them were a series of keyboards. There was a sterile neatness, a slight hum from the equipment and more of the metallic liquid on the floor.

  ‘What the hell is all this?’ Hugo’s mouth was so dry he could hardly speak. Was she as afraid? He glanced at Philippa and was amazed to see her so calm. ‘Is this some kind of missile base?’ he asked, perversely determined to find a rational explanation to dispel his increasing anxiety. ‘But there’s no launching site.’

  ‘Maybe that’s someplace else,’ she replied.

  Hugo sat down and shakily began to run his hands over one of the keyboards.

  Without warning the pyramid appeared on every screen. Mechanically, as if in a trance, Hugo depressed more keys, but the image remained, shimmering slightly. Then the pyramid disappeared, to be replaced by a muddy-looking interior, dark and shapeless. The fear churned inside him again, but the screen was so dim that neither of them could make anything out. Then a number of globes floated across from one side to the other.

  ‘There’s a winged serpent in there – or it sure as hell looks like one,’ whispered Philippa, but almost immediately the globes began to disappear and the screen went dark. Hugo continued to play with the keys and the pyramid briefly returned, shimmered and then vanished.

  ‘I heard them,’ he said slowly. ‘I heard them – just before I passed out’

  *

  ‘We’ve got to get going.’ Hugo gazed at her unseeingly, his head splitting, his mind scrambled. He had trouble making any decisions at all let alone putting them into words. ‘If they see the truck from the air, it’ll look much more suspicious parked here than moving.’

  ‘We need diesel.’

  They spent another ten minutes searching the remainder of the building but there was no fuel – only a canteen, kitchen and dormitory, all of which seemed to have been abandoned quick
ly for the beds were unmade and there were dirty cups and plates in one of the dishwashers.

  ‘It’s three o’clock.’ Hugo stood outside the white brick building in the searing heat. He was full of foreboding. ‘Let’s go. There’s nothing else here. If we’ve got to walk then at least we can do it at night’

  ‘Are you scared?’ she asked.

  ‘Shit scared. I think we’re being led into something that doesn’t have anything to do with us as we are now – but as we were. Perhaps we could have coped with all this much better then. What do you think?’

  ‘Like you.’

  He saw she was grinning at him and some of the tension eased. This was the beginning of the journey Brent had been talking about. He was certain.

  The sand-hills were behind them now, flat desert rippling away on either side. There were no clouds in the huge afternoon sky and the sun was intensifying. Occasionally they passed a mimosa tree whose roots were reputed to be vigorous enough to find water. Their frond-like branches trailed to the ground, offering a little shelter, but Hugo was driven on by an overriding sense of urgency. He did not want to stop now, however exhausted he was.

  ‘I still don’t understand this lack of traffic,’ he said eventually, very conscious of the relentless descent of the petrol gauge.

  ‘I’m sure it’s the allied advance. The Iran-Iraq war hasn’t been over for long – so there would have been zilch communication anyway.’ She spoke distantly, as though her preoccupations were elsewhere.

  But as if to support Philippa’s theory they began to pass the remnants of battle: shot-up tanks half buried in the sand, jeeps, buses, armoured cars, mostly burnt out, lying at the side of the road. There were also a few anti-aircraft guns – or what was left of them – and dozens of skeletal trucks.

  They drove on, the sun sinking lower until it plunged into the sand, leaving an eerie, jaundiced twilight.

  ‘It’s getting darker,’ said Hugo.

  ‘And colder.’

  ‘How many miles?’

  ‘Ten?’ she hazarded.

  A bird flapped its way across their path and then hung lisdessly in the air above them.

  ‘Vulture?’ Hugo tried the ghost of a laugh.

  ‘I think it’s some kind of crow.’

  Still the truck rolled on, with the needle hovering on zero and occasionally dipping below. Then the engine spluttered and died.

  ‘That’s it.’ Hugo clambered out of his seat and disappeared into the back of the truck. A few minutes later he re-emerged with two gourds which he had filled from the water container. ‘These were on the floor.’

  ‘Neat.’ Philippa shivered and Hugo put his arm round her. ‘What’s getting to us?’ she asked, but he knew she did not expect a reply.

  They climbed down on to the shadowy road, immediately feeling lost in the wilderness. Above them the stars seemed much more starkly bright than usual and a sickle moon, looking as if it was made of aluminium, was turning the sand to a livid white.

  They walked away from the truck in silence, and soon Hugo was conscious of being on a treadmill that led nowhere, for the desert landscape was still completely unchanging, monotonously sterile.

  ‘We should get some sleep,’ Philippa said at last.

  ‘The temperature’s going down much faster than that fucking fuel gauge. We’ll stop soon. Get a couple of hours sleep – and then keep walking. Should make the border by dawn.’ He tried to sound optimistic but it was not easy. His knees felt unbearably stiff and he was becoming increasingly worried about the road. Suppose they weren’t on the border road at all? Suppose it just petered out into the nothingness of the desert? Was that the reason there was no traffic? Could Philippa have been wrong? The Tarmac seemed to narrow slightly and a cold night breeze spread little flurries of sand over the battered, heat-blistered surface.

  ‘Suppose this isn’t the road to the border?’ he asked truculently.

  ‘Of course it is,’ she said briskly, sounding like a nanny.

  ‘Could we have missed the way? This could just be a service route to the base from some other installation.’

  ‘You’re talking crap,’ she said angrily, the motherly briskness gone. ‘We both need sleep. Let’s take a break in half an hour.’

  Of course, that was it: he needed sleep. Everything would be better in the morning. That was what he used to tell Brent when he was a child. ‘Don’t worry – it’ll all be OK when the sun comes up.’ He half laughed at the pretence; another part of him needed it.

  They crested a small hill and stopped; in the pale moonlight they could see quite clearly that the road had petered out into the sand.

  ‘You weren’t talking crap,’ said Philippa unwillingly.

  They huddled together for warmth, trying to blot out the disaster and fortify themselves against the coming day. Gradually the cold increased and Hugo was unable to relax, his mind racing. Then he realized what they had to do next. The thought was inescapable and had to be enacted.

  ‘Make love to me.’

  He had never found sex so good. With Philippa it was a totally different experience from his guilty couplings with Lucy and the frantic grapplings with whores in faraway places. And there was a further dimension – the halting suspicion that they had been together before, that it was not all a dream. And sure enough, as the orgasm came, memory stirred and he was certain they had made love before.

  They held each other tight against the cold, and despite their isolation and the fear of what was to come, Hugo had never felt so joyfully liberated, although he also knew that they could both die in a few hours.

  ‘Do you recall?’ she asked gently.

  ‘There are shadows somewhere in the back of my memory, but they don’t make the kind of sense I want them to.’

  ‘They won’t leave us to die out here,’ she said confidently, sensing his anxiety. ‘Look what happened yesterday: we were protected, taken on a journey, shown the task, and then dumped out here, but to make love, to regenerate other.’

  That word again, he thought. Another part of the puzzle falling into place. Who are they, wondered Hugo with foreboding. Philippa sounded far more positive than he, but then she had not been conditioned to be a sceptic as he had. Whatever was stirring inside him now had been implanted at a much earlier stage of her life. She had not pursued such a successful course of evasion, and as a result she accepted much more immediately that the mystical life had grown within her and that they jointly had a mission to fulfil.

  ‘Have you thought that our guide might also be our enemy?’ he said, deliberately playing the devil’s advocate.

  ‘Maybe. But we’ve got each other. That’s what we’ve always had.’ Her confidence irritated him.

  ‘Does that give you such blind faith in our strength?’

  ‘Not blind. We aren’t being taken to the pyramid to lay back. They sure as hell need us for something big – something they can’t take on.’

  ‘Something we could die for?’

  ‘Perhaps. Are you ready to die, Hugo?’ She laughed, but without humour.

  ‘If I had the sure and certain knowledge that we’ll be together again in some other life.’ But he could see from her expression that she knew he lied.

  ‘Did you ever believe in reincarnation?’ she asked him.

  ‘I never gave it a thought, but then I was wrapped in so many layers of self-delusion. The more I shed them, the more I feel renewal – like the earth after a long, hard winter.’

  ‘Are you scared?’

  ‘Very,’ he admitted, and then added quickly, ‘but I still don’t feel I know you. You’ve told me so little.’

  ‘While you’ve told me so much? Well, less has happened to me than you – maybe because I’ve been in preparation. That’s why I can believe more easily than you can.’

  ‘I wish to God I’d met you earlier.’

  ‘We were meant to meet now – for this frequency change – whatever that is. Can you credit this? All the way through school and uni
versity I never made too many relationships, and even those were at the most detached level. It was as if I was marking time. Waiting.’

  ‘Better than destroying people.’ Hugo’s voice was savage. ‘That’s been my forte.’

  At least you’ve been close to them,’ she said sadly.

  ‘Before I destroyed them?’

  ‘I didn’t say that’

  ‘But that’s what happened.’

  Sensing his pain Philippa hurried on. ‘There’s another aspect to all this. It’s something precious that kept me from going down when I couldn’t reach anyone. I felt – something inside. Like a foetus that never developed.’

  Hugo gazed at her. There was an expression in her eyes that he did not understand and he felt a surge of anxiety. He ran his hands nervously over her stomach, but found only the tightness of hard muscle.

  ‘So far I’ve accepted the impossible – which gradually got to be the possible,’ he said slowly. ‘Why shouldn’t there be worlds within worlds? Reincarnation? Winged serpents? Pyramids with portals? But this – this is something else.’

  ‘Do you think I’m fooling myself?’ said Philippa defensively. ‘I even went for a scan.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘There was nothing there. I expected that.’

  ‘Yet-’

  ‘I still feel the presence.’

  ‘You said it was like a foetus.’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Are we talking in the abstract?’ he said in sudden exasperation.

  ‘I don’t know. And there’s – there’s something screwy about my right eye. Well – ’ she corrected herself, ‘not screwy, exactly. I noticed it a few months ago.’

  Hugo drew her to him and in the grey light of the slow desert dawn saw a winged serpent, quite distinct and in the centre of her pupil. Within seconds it had disappeared.

  ‘You saw it.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me before?’

  ‘I don’t know. Perhaps I hoped it wasn’t there.’

  ‘And you’re afraid?’

  ‘Sometimes. But there’s comfort too.’